{"id":19587,"date":"2017-02-11T21:02:25","date_gmt":"2017-02-12T02:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/?p=19587"},"modified":"2017-02-15T16:52:04","modified_gmt":"2017-02-15T21:52:04","slug":"the-sears-candy-shop-plus-the-return-of-wishbookweb-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/?p=19587","title":{"rendered":"The Sears Candy Shop! Plus: The Return of WishbookWeb.com!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Years before I launched CollectingCandy.com, I mounted an effort to create an online archive of vintage Christmas catalogs, like the old Sears Wishbooks.\u00a0 That vintage Christmas catalog website was and is WishbookWeb.com<\/a> and this week and I relaunched WishbookWeb with a bundle of all-new features, accessibility, and a brand-new look.\u00a0 So today I’ll be connecting to that site’s return by first taking a look at Sears’ own in-store retail candy outlet called “The Candy Shop”.\u00a0 Make the jump to check it out!<\/p>\n

The idea of Sears having its own candy shop might seem like a foreign idea to most folks these days, but there was a time when retail stores like Sears branched out in all sorts of ways, like including a restaurant or diner<\/a> on the premises of the store.\u00a0 Given that context, the idea of a small candy store set inside of a Sears location isn’t that crazy.\u00a0 I wish I had photos of what an actual Sears candy shop looked like, but sadly I do not.\u00a0 What I do have are two pieces in my archives that originated from the Sears candy shops; a bulk candy retail bag, and a chocolate bar wrapper.\u00a0 Let’s take a look.<\/p>\n

First up is the retail bag.\u00a0 This one is from 1980 and sports the snazzy “The Candy Shop” logo included in today’s title image.\u00a0 Check the back of the bag for a list of some of the products offered at The Candy Shop in Sears at the time – sounds like appealing, old-fashioned goods which helps me imagine what kind of candy shop it was:<\/p>\n

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Sears Roebuck and Co – Sears The Candy Shop – Fresh Delicious Candies – bulk candy retail bag package – 1980<\/p><\/div>\n

Jumping ahead a few years, Sears even had their own branded chocolate bar.\u00a0 While this might seem like an oddball piece to most, these types of unusual store-branded wrappers and pieces of packaging are some of my absolute favorites to track down and share.\u00a0 Note that it features the more modernized Sears logo (introduced around 1984-85, according to my research) as well as the “The Candy Shop” branding:<\/p>\n

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Sears Roebuck and Co – Sears The Candy Shop – Rich Milk Chocolate Bar with Roasted Almonds – 2.5 oz chocolate bar candy wrapper – circa 1984-1987<\/p><\/div>\n

Unfortunately, those are the only pieces of Sears’ The Candy Shop<\/em> ephemera or images I’ve ever come across, but I am always on the lookout for more.\u00a0 I think it’s fascinating to consider how varied and diverse the retail offerings of a brick-and-mortar store like Sears once were.\u00a0 It seems like such a novel, even foreign concept now.<\/p>\n

Posting about Sears’ The Candy Shop today is partly because I think it’s a fun thing to look at, but also because of the relaunch this week of WishbookWeb.com<\/a> – which is something I want to share with as many people as I can.<\/p>\n

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The following nine-year-old interview from January 2008 describes some of the early background of the site pretty well (note my stated desire to make the catalogs text-searchable):<\/p>\n

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WishbookWeb – Antique Week Article – January 14th 2008<\/p><\/div>\n

For its first decade of existence, WishbookWeb.com<\/a> was a fairly blunt instrument insofar as interfacing with the catalog content was concerned.<\/p>\n

I initially sought a way to serve the images we’d scanned by using one of the online gallery-creation programs available at the time (circa 2005).\u00a0 But whenever I threw the requirements of the full catalogs at these programs (sometimes more than 500 pages in a single gallery), they would inevitably fail.\u00a0 I finally found a method that worked and it became the default interface (I used a Photoshop slideshow output).\u00a0 But there was no text search and when mobile devices like smart phones and tablets began arriving on the scene in the years that followed, the site was nearly unusable on them.\u00a0 As I said, a fairly blunt instrument.<\/p>\n

Early on, the front page of WishbookWeb.com looked like this:<\/p>\n

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Old WishbookWeb Screenshot – circa 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

So, it had been a long time that I’d wanted to find a way to update the site while holding onto the dream of making the catalogs text-searchable as well as accessible on mobile devices.<\/p>\n

I would finally find a piece of software<\/a> to do the trick, allowing me to present the catalogs as lush flipbooks complete with text-search capability.\u00a0 But even after purchasing that high-end software, the task of conversion to the new flipbook format proved to be a daunting task.\u00a0 It would take another year for me to carve out the significant blocks of time needed for the time-consuming, multi-step conversion process.\u00a0 But finally I was able to do it and on February 10th, 2017 WishbookWeb was relaunched in what I’ve been informally calling “WishbookWeb 2.0” format.<\/p>\n

Here’s a look at the top of the newly-relaunched catalog navigation page:<\/p>\n

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New WishbookWeb “2.0” Screenshot<\/p><\/div>\n

I also created a custom launch pane for each catalog.\u00a0 Here are a few of them (they’re a little tiny here, but they are perfectly legible over on the site):<\/p>\n

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WishbookWeb graphical launch panes<\/p><\/div>\n

Here’s an Instagram video I created showcasing some of the new features:<\/p>\n

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A post shared by Jason Liebig (@collectingcandy)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n